Awards and Accomplishments

Cornell graduate students accrue many honors, grants, fellowships, and publications. Here are just some of their accomplishments from the last 5 years:

2017

Hilary Holbrow’s paper, “The Role of Ethnic Bias in Wage Inequality,” won the 2017 Robert B. McGinnis Award for the best paper in social psychology, broadly defined.

Meg Doherty Bea and Alyssa Goldman are co-winners of the Robin M. Williams award for best graduate student paper. Meg’s paper examines racial and ethnic differences in consumer expectations. Alyssa’s paper examines how mothers’ health is affected when their adult children are incarcerated.

Theresa Rocha Beardall and Emily Sandusky are co-winners of the 2017 Departmental award for Outstanding Teaching Assistant. Theresa Rocha Beardall also won a SAGE Teaching Innovations & Professional Development Award from the Sage Publishing Company.

Lucas Drouhot was awarded the Cornell Institute for European Studies’ Sidney Tarrow Paper Prize for his paper, “Cracks in the Melting Pot? Religiosity and Assimilation Among the Diverse Muslim Population in France.”

9 Cornell students presented papers at the 2017 annual meetings of the Population Association of America in Chicago.

Lauren Griffin won the prestigious Buttrick-Crippen Award from the Knight Writing Institute. This year-long fellowship will allow Lauren to design and teach her own Freshman Writing Seminar, “Modern Romance,” about contemporary families.

2016

George Berry’s paper with Sean Taylor, “Discussion Quality Diffuses in the Digital Public Square,” was accepted for the Proceedings of the 2017 World Wide Web conference in Perth, Australia.

Ningzi Li won the competitive C.V. Starr Fellowship in East Asian Studies from Cornell’s East Asia Program.

Youngmin Yi’s co-authored paper with Kristin Turney and Christopher Wildeman, “Mental Health among Jail and Prison Inmates,” was published in the American Journal of Men’s Health.

Paul Muniz was selected for the Cornell chapter of the Edward A. Bouchet Graduate Honor Society, which celebrates academic excellence, recognizes outstanding service and leadership, and promotes diversity in doctoral education and the professoriate.

Alyssa Goldman’s solo-authored paper, “All in the Family: The Link Between Kin Network Bridging and Cardiovascular Risk among Older Adults,” was published in Social Science and Medicine.

A paper off of Daniel DellaPosta’s dissertation won the Organization and Management Theory section award for the best unpublished graduate student paper at the Academy of Management meetings.

Hilary Holbrow and her collaborator Hiroshi Ono won a $37,000 grant from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and a $10,000 award from the BEST Alliance, a joint venture by the governments of Japan, China, and Korea to foster excellence in global business leadership training. Hilary’s paper (with Kikuko Nagayoshi), “Economic Integration of Skilled Migrants in Japan: The Role of Employment Practices,” is forthcoming in International Migration Review.

Dafna Gelbgiser’s paper with Kim Weeden and Cornell PhD Sarah Thébaud (UC-Santa Barbara) on gender segregation in doctoral education by field of study and program prestige is forthcoming in Sociological Science.

Lucas Drouhot’s qualifying paper, “Reconsidering ‘Community Liberated’: How Class and the National Context Shape Personal Support Networks,” is forthcoming in Social Networks.

Emily Taylor Poppe’s solo-authored paper, “Homeowner Legal Representation in the Foreclosure Crisis,” is forthcoming in Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. She also published a first-author paper (with Jeffrey Rachlinski) entitled, “Do Lawyers Matter? The Effect of Legal Representation in Civil Suits,” in the Pepperdine Law Review.

Alicia Eads’ co-authored paper with Mabel Berezin, “Risk is for the Rich? Childhood Vaccination Resistance and a Culture of Health,” is forthcoming in Social Science and Medicine.

Alex Currit’s paper, co-authored with Erin York Cornwell, on “Racial and Social Disparities in Bystander Support During Medical Emergencies on US Streets,” was published in American Journal of Public Health. It received press attention in 11 media outlets, including the Washington Post.

Yongren Shi‘s dissertation, “Study of Political and Cultural Polarization Using Book Co-purchases and Reviews,” won the Outstanding Dissertation-in-Progress Award from the Mathematical Sociology section of the ASA.

Cornell graduate students solo- or co-authored 18 papers that were accepted for presentation at the American Sociological Association annual meeting in Seattle this August.

An abridged version of Dafna Gelbgiser’s paper, “College for All, Degrees for Few: For-Profit Colleges and Socioeconomic Inequality in Bachelor’s Degree Attainment,” was published in the Proceedings of the Academy of Management and selected as a finalist for the 2016 William H. Newman Award for Best Paper Based on a Dissertation from the Academy of Management.

Fedor Dokshin’s solo-authored paper, “Whose Backyard and What’s at Issue? Spatial and Ideological Dynamics of Local Fracking Opposition in New York State, 2010-2013,” is forthcoming in American Sociological Review. An earlier version of this paper won the Robin M Williams, Jr. award.

Yongren Shi, Fedor Dokshin, Michael Genkin, and Matt Brashears are co-authors of “A Member Saved is a Member Earned? The Recruitment-Retention Trade-Off and Organizational Strategies for Membership Growth,” which is published in the American Sociological Review.

Mauricio Bucca’s paper (coauthored with Kim Weeden and Youngjoo Cha) on trends in the gender wage gap, the motherhood page penalty, and the fatherhood wage premium is forthcoming in RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of Social Sciences.

Alicia Eads and Laura Tach published a paper in RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of Social Sciences entitled, “Wealth and Inequality in the Stability of Romantic Relationships.”

Alyssa Goldman’s paper (coauthored with Susan Fleming, Shelley Correll, and Catherine Taylor), “Settling In: The Role of Individual and Departmental Tactics in the Development of New Faculty Networks,” was published in the Journal of Higher Education.

Lucas Drouhot won the 2016 Robin M Williams, Jr. award for his paper, “Cracks in the Melting Pot? Explaining the Puzzle of Delayed Religious Assimilation Among Muslim Immigrants in France.”

Tony Sirianni won the 2016 Robert B McGinnis award for the best paper in social psychology, broadly defined, for “Taking One for the Team: The Specialization of Violence in Professional Ice Hockey.”

Paul Muniz won the 2016 Outstanding Teaching Apprentice award in the department for his outstanding work in Introduction to Sociology and in Urban Sociology.

Cornell Sociology graduate students presented 9 papers at the 2016 Population Association of America meetings in Washington D.C.

Emily Taylor Poppe’s paper (with Stephen Morgan), “A Design and a Model for Investigating the Heterogeneity of Context Effects in Public Opinion Surveys” was published in Sociological Methodology.

Lisha Liu won a Clifford C Clogg Fellowship to attend the 2015 ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research.

Dan DellaPosta’s paper, “Bridging the Parochial Divide: Closure and Brokerage in Mafia Families,” won awards for the best graduate student paper from both the Economic Sociology and the Rationality and Society sections of the ASA.

Rachel Behler was awarded a 12-month Health Services Research Dissertation Award from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a division of NIH/DHHS.

Cornell Sociology graduate students will present 18 papers at the 2015 American Sociological Association meetings in Chicago.

Daniel J DellaPosta and Yongren Shi are co-authors (with Michael Macy) of a 2015 paper in the American Journal of Sociology, “Why Do Liberals Drink Lattes?” Dan has also published solo-authored papers in RSSM and Social Forces.

Alicia Eads won the 2015 Robert B McGinnis Award for her paper “The U.S. Foreclosure Crisis: Government Agency Cultural Environments and Policy Responses”. She also won the 2014/2015 departmental citation for excellence in teaching.

Dafna Gelbgiser was awarded the 2015 Robin M. Williams, Jr. Award for her paper “College for All, Degrees for Few: The Expansion of For-Profit Colleges and Socioeconomic Differences in Degree Attainment”.

Alison Dwyer Emory was a blue-ribbon winner at the 2015 Population Association of America meetings for her poster, co-authored with Laura Tach, entitled, “The Spillover Effects of HOPE VI Redevelopment on Neighborhood Poverty and Racial Composition.”

Hilary J Holbrow was awarded a Fulbright Graduate Research Fellowship for 2014-2016 for her project on Japanese companies’ strategies for economic revitalization. She is an International Research Fellow at the Canon Institute for Global Studies and a Visiting Scholar at Sophia University in the 2015/16 academic year.

2014

Dafna Gelbgiser co-authored a paper (with Stephen Morgan) in Sociological Science on Mexican ancestry and educational attainment. Dafna is also co-author on two papers in Social Science Research, one with Steve Morgan and Kim Weeden, and one with Sigal Alon.

Chan Suh’s paper, “Differential participation in professional activism: the case of the Guantanamo Habeas Lawyers” was published in Mobilization in 2014.

Allison Dwyer Emory’s paper (with Maureen Waller) on unmarried and divorcing parents in separated families was published in Family Court Review.

Fedor Dokshin was awarded the 2014 Robin M. Williams, Jr. Award for his paper “Fuel for Institutional Change: The Diffusion of Local Anti-Fracking Ordinances in New York State, 2010-2013”.

Hilary Holbrow won the 2014 Robert B McGinnis Award for her paper “How Conformity to Labor Market Norms Increases Access to Job Search Assistance: A Case Study from Japan”.

Kyle Albert published two solo-authored papers off of his Master’s thesis on labor union political strategies, one in Sociological Inquiry (2014) and one in Sociological Forum (2013).

Dafna Gelbgiser and Chan Suh were awarded the 2013-2014 Department Citation for Excellence in Teaching, going above and beyond the call of duty in for their students.

2013

Michael Genkin‘s paper (With Robert Braun) “Cultural Resonance and the Diffusion of Suicide Bombings: The Role of Collectivism” (forthcoming in the Journal of Conflict Resolution) won an honorable mention from the Elise Boulding Graduate Student Paper competition hosted by the ASA Peace, War, and Social Conflict Section. He also won the ASA’s Mathematical Sociology Section 2008 Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Award for his co-authored paper with Alexander Gutfraind “How Do Terrorist Cells Self-Assemble? Insights from an Agent-Based Model.”

Rachel Behler was awarded the 2013 Robin M. Williams, Jr. Award for her paper “You Can’t Always Get What You Want: Structural Determinants of Compromised Ideals In Intimate Behavior”.

Matthew Hoffberg was awarded the 2012-2013 Department Citation for Excellence in Teaching for his work in Sociology 1840 Six Pretty Good Books and Sociology 2160 Health and Society.

Daniel J DellaPosta published two solo-authored papers, one in Research in Social Stratification and Mobility on the economic returns to military service and one in Social Forces on immigration and the dynamics of Front National voting in France.

Hilary Holbrow received an honorable mention from the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program and was awarded a Robert J. Smith Fellowship for the 2013-2014 academic year. She published a co-authored paper (with Victor Nee) in Daedalus called “Why Asian Americans are Becoming Mainstream”

2012

Emily Taylor Poppe and Scott Golder were awarded the 2011-2012 Department Citation for Excellence in Teaching: Emily for her work in Sociology 6020 Linear Models, and Scott for his work in Sociology 2208 Social Inequality.

Daniel J. DellaPosta was awarded the 2012 Robin M. Williams, Jr. Award for “Competitive Threat, Intergroup Contact, or Both? Immigration and the Dynamics of Front National Voting in France.”

Jessica Houston Su‘s paper, “Pregnancy Intentions and Parents’ Psychological Welll-Being,” was awarded the 2012 Robert B. McGinnis Award and was published in the Journal of Marriage and the Family.

Kyle Albert was awarded a three-year Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation. His fellowship was awarded for a proposed program of research that considers the implications of the emergence of “green” occupations on socioeconomic inequality.

Matthew Hoffberg won the 2012 Best Graduate Student Paper award from the ASA Rationality and Society section and the 2011 Robin Williams Jr. Best Paper award from Cornell’s Department of Sociology. In 2010, he was awarded an NSF dissertation improvement grant for his project, “Reciprocity and Perceived Sincerity in Organizational Workgroups.” Matt also served as a Buttrick Crippen teaching fellow at Cornell’s Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines, where he designed and taught an undergraduate writing seminar on the topic of authenticity and modern capitalism.